W is for Weather

I was born in Oregon.  My mother told me that the year I was born it rained nearly all spring and summer.  Apparently this has affected me my entire life be cause I absolutely love rainy weather, and I pretty much dispise sunshine.  You know that Disney movie with the wizard who has a duel with that nasty witch?  At the end of the duel he infects her with a virus that means she needs sunlight.  At the close of the scene she is shrieking about hating nice, bright, healthy sunshine.  That's pretty much me without the warts and scraggly hair.  Well, OK most days without the scraggly hair...I am a mom after all!  And honestly with skin like mine the only thing the sun gets me is burns with a promise of skin cancer later on so yuck yuck in my opinion.

I don't think my birth year has everything to do with my love of the rain and fog.  My parents hunted deer every year and once my brother was old enough took us with them.  We spent hours trailing my parents or grandfather through the deep forest.  It seemed to me then that it rained every day we were out, and those times are some of my best childhood memories.  Our entire family was together, we got to play and explore, and we also got to spend time with our Grandfather Tucker, who we only saw during hunting season.  All in the rain...the glorious rain.





Fog rolling in off the ocean.














 My Aiden boy watching the sea and fog.

I don't love just rain, I also love fog, sleet, hail, and just enough snow to close the schools so my kids can stay home and play with me.  The only good thing about summertime is my kids get to stay home with me then too!  Sadly, though they like to spend a lot of time outside, dragging me with them into the hateful sunshine.

 Samantha crouched under my coat in the hail.

The kids place bowls outside to catch the hail.  I sprinkle it with sugar and they eat it.









I think the first rain of fall is my favorite.  By the end of summer I am almost sick with longing for the rain to return.  As the storm builds up it feels like the trees are holding their breath, fluttering their leaves in anticipation of their first drink in months (or weeks depending on the year).  The grass and even the earth seem to cry out for the rain to come.  The pitiless sun has beat down, cracked the earth, dried up the flowers, shriveled the trees...everything waits.  And then the rain pours down.  Not dainty sprinkles like in the spring, or drizzles like most of winter, but wonderful, lovely sheets of water plummeting from the sky to being life back to everything.

My kids seem to have inherited my love of the rain.  They play outside in it, dance in it, and then run inside for hot baths and cocoa.

I let Seri outside to play on the porch one rainy day.  She went straight to the water falling off the roof and played in it.

Tucker at the beach in his jammies in the rain.  He loves the rain too..once he asked me some questions about raindrops.
Do raindrops get afraid of heights?
Do raindrops ever want to stay clouds?
What if a raindrop wants to be itself and not join in a puddle?
Can raindrops have thoughts?




I guess its a good thing that I love the rain.  I've met people who live here and love the sun, and they spend a lot of months unhappy, where as I am never more happy than when the sky is grey and drizzly.  What kind of weather is your favorite?